We Shall Not Shatter cover art

We Shall Not Shatter

A WWII Story of Friendship, Family, and Hope Against All Odds (Resilient Women of WWII Series, Book 1)

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About this listen

Brzeziny, Poland, 1939. Zofia's comfortable lifestyle overturns when her husband, Jabez, who monitors Nazi activity, has gone missing. Rather than fleeing the country with her young son, as she had promised Jabez who is fearing retaliation, she decides to stay. She cannot possibly leave her friend, Aanya. Since their childhood they have amazed fellow Brzeziners that it does not matter that Aanya is Jewish and deaf, and that Zofia is Catholic and hearing. Now, more than ever with war looming, Zofia will do whatever is necessary to protect her family and Aanya.

As both love and war approach their Polish town, Zofia and Aanya must make choices that will change the meaning of family, home, and their precious friendship. The journey, decisions, and the no-going-back consequences the women face will either help them to survive—or not—as Hitler's Third Reich revs up its control of the world.

Inspired by the author's paternal heritage from Brzeziny, this is a heartbreaking yet beautiful story of two women who are determined to remain united in friendship and to live freely despite the odds.

©2022 Elaine Shock (P)2022 Tantor 20th Century Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Jewish World Literature War Resilience
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Firstly it was a freebie so I can’t really complain.

I found the American narrator just wrong, it’s a book about WW2, with most of the book set in Poland with polish characters.

Interesting storyline but, sometimes too twee and at others quite brutal, it’s as though the author was not sure of the target audience.

Not as good as I had hoped

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Feel a bit guilty criticising this as it is such an important and tragic part of history. The narration was for me a bit too sweet. Very long but seemed to focus on the minutiae and rush through earth shattering events

Tragic but not for me

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I enjoy listening to audiobooks from this period and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. The story was told from a very different perspective from those I’ve read before, I thought the writers ability to weave in sign language was really clever and the narration was beautifully done.

Beautifully written and narrated

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I found this book really hard going. Despite being set during WW2 & the Holocaust there was very little that actually happened during the course of the book. The book is padded out with heavy slow dialogue and minute details that add nothing to the story. There was an opportunity to delve into a really important and interesting subject ~ Nazis, Judaism and disabilities ~ unfortunately the author merely skimmed the surface, with no real sense of how very difficult life was at the time. The book just didn't flow at all, the prose being heavy and slow. In fact the writing is quite juvenile, as if written for teenagers.Throughout the book, the two main characters lack any real depth or development. A disappointing choice.

Really hard going

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